‘Like a war zone’: Wildfire death toll hits 56, top federal, state officials tour ruins

By Kathleen Ronayne and Andrew SelskyThe Associated Press

Wednesday

Nov 14, 2018 at 12:01 AMNov 14, 2018 at 9:02 PM

PARADISE — With at least 130 people still missing, National Guard troops searched Wednesday through charred debris for more victims of California’s deadliest wildfire as top federal and state officials toured the ruins of a community completely destroyed by the flames.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke joined Gov. Jerry Brown on a visit to the leveled town of Paradise, telling reporters it was the worst fire devastation he had ever seen. Zinke refused to endorse President Donald Trump’s claim that California’s forest-management practices are the cause of the state’s terrible fires, citing warmer temperatures, dead trees and the poor forest management.

“Now is not the time to point fingers,” Zinke said. “There are lots of reasons these catastrophic fires are happening. This is not a state issue, this is not a federal issue, this is an American issue.”

Brown, a frequent critic of Trump’s policies, said he spoke with Trump, who pledged federal assistance.

“This is so devastating that I don’t really have the words to describe it,” Brown said, saying officials would need to learn how to better prevent fires from becoming so deadly. “It looks like a war zone. It is.”

Nearly 8,800 homes were destroyed when flames hit Paradise, a former gold-mining camp popular with retirees, on Nov. 8, killing at least 56 people in California’s deadliest wildfire, Sheriff Kory Honea announced Wednesday evening. The fire has burned 138,000 acres and was 35 percent contained late Wednesday. There also were three fatalities from separate blazes in Southern California.

Honea said the task of searching for bodies was so vast that his office brought in another 287 searchers Wednesday, including the National Guard troops, bringing the total number of searchers to 461 plus 22 cadaver dogs. He said a rapid-DNA assessment system was expected to be in place soon to speed up identifications of the dead, though officials tentatively have identified 47 of the 56.

It will take years to rebuild the town of 27,000, if people decide that’s what should be done, said Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada looks like a wasteland.

“The infrastructure is basically a total rebuild at this point,” Long said. “You’re not going to be able to rebuild Paradise the way it was.”

Temporary schools and hospitals will be brought in, Long said. Officials also are looking to bring in mobile homes for thousands of people left homeless, and local leaders may consider establishing refugee camps for those displaced by the fires.

“We’re on the edge,” said Ed Mayer, the executive director of the county’s housing agency, when asked if the county was facing a humanitarian crisis.

Debris removal in Paradise and outlying communities will have to wait until the search for victims finishes, he said.

That grim search continued Wednesday.

On one street, ash and dust flew up as roughly 20 National Guard members wearing white jumpsuits, helmets and breathing masks lifted giant heaps of bent and burned metal, in what was left of a home. Pink and blue chalk drawings of a cat and a flower remained on the driveway, near a scorched toy truck.

The soldiers targeted homes of the missing. If anything resembling human remains is found, a coroner takes over.

After the soldiers finished at the site, a chaplain huddled with them in prayer.

The number of missing is “fluctuating every day” as people are located or remains are found, said Steve Collins, a deputy with the Butte County Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities on Wednesday released the names of about 100 people who still are missing, including many in their 80s and 90s, and dozens more still could be unaccounted for. Sheriff’s department spokeswoman Megan McMann said the list was incomplete because detectives were concerned they would be overwhelmed with calls from relatives if the entire list were released.

“We can’t release them all at once,” McMann said. “So they are releasing the names in batches.”

Authorities have not updated the total number of missing since Sunday, when 228 people were unaccounted for.

To speed up identification of remains, officials are using portable devices that can identify genetic material in a couple of hours, rather than days or weeks.

Accounts of narrow escapes from the flames continued to emerge. More than a dozen people who were trapped by a wall of fire survived by plunging into a cold lake.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that a family of four, their 90-year-old neighbor and their pets sought safety in the chilly Concow Reservoir after the roaring fire surrounded their homes.

The family stood in shoulder-deep water as flames singed the vegetation on the shore behind them. Not far away, at least a dozen others rushed into the lake after the caravan of vehicles they were in was cut off by flames.

In Southern California, a body was found in the ruins of a home in Agoura Hills that had been checked earlier by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, bringing the potential total to three in the so-called Woolsey Fire. That fire started Nov. 8 and quickly became one of the largest and most destructive fires in state history. Firefighters have made steady progress this week but warned many hotspots remain.

The number of homes and other structures destroyed stood at 483 and another 86 were damaged. Those numbers were expected to rise. More than 80 percent of National Parks Service land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was incinerated.

The Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.

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